Author: TheConversation

By Beverly Moran, Professor Emerita of Law, Vanderbilt University The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a set of tax cuts Donald Trump signed into law during his first term as president, will expire on December 31, 2024. As Trump and Republicans prepare to negotiate new tax cuts in 2025, it is worth gleaning lessons from the president-elect’s first set of cuts. The 2017 cuts were the most extensive revision to the Internal Revenue Code since the Ronald Reagan administration. The changes it imposed range from the tax that corporations pay on their foreign income to limits on the deductions...

By Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine Most people agree that actual facts matter in such activities as debate, discussion and reporting. Once facts are gathered, verified, and distributed, informed decision-making can proceed in such important exercises as voting. But what happens when important, verified facts are published and broadcast widely, yet the resulting impact proves underwhelming – or even meaningless? If vital facts fail to affect the news audiences they intend to inform? This is the conundrum facing American journalism after November 5, 2024. As a former journalist, and a scholar of media...

By Tin Cheuk Leung, Associate Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University Late in December 2023, a former editor of “The New York Times,” dropped a bombshell in an article for “The Economist.” “The leadership of ‘The New York Times’ is losing control of its principles,” he wrote, saying slanted coverage at the institution is “pervasive.” In the article, Bennet talked about the pressures driving what he called “liberal bias” at one of the world’s most influential newspapers. While recounting his final days at “The New York Times” – he resigned amid controversy in 2020 over an op-ed by Republican...

By Amy Cooter, Director of Research, Academic Development, and Innovation at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, Middlebury President-elect Donald Trump has reaffirmed that once he takes office he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military on American streets to accomplish his promises to round up and deport millions of undocumented migrants. Many experts’ concerns about this program have included the facts that immigrants contribute enormous value to the U.S. economy and mass deportation would hurt food production, housing construction, and other crucial industries. Other scholars have analyzed how deportation traumatizes families. I have an...

By Amanda Kennell, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame; Jessica McManus Warnell, Teaching Professor of Management and Organization, University of Notre Dame The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of Atomic and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations. Many of these witnesses have spent their lives warning of the dangers of nuclear war – but initially, much of the world didn’t want to hear it. “The fates of those who survived the infernos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were long concealed and neglected,” the Nobel committee noted in its announcement....

By Say Burgin, Assistant Professor of History, Dickinson College Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, some White people have been wondering how they can work with Black people to fight racial inequality. As a history professor who studies social movements, I know this is not a new question. In the 1960s, civil rights activists deliberated how to channel White support for racial equality. These conversations took place in cities across the country. In Detroit, White residents responded with particular enthusiasm. There, as I documented in my 2024 book, Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power...